Wake Up And Don't Smell The Coffee

The "Bean Around The World" Case in which Inproheat saves a neighborhood coffee roaster from forced closure

Just about everyone loves the smell of coffee in the morning. But the residents in the Ambleside neighbourhood in the quiet municipality of West Vancouver, British Columbia were not pleased with the noxious fumes that wafted up and over their homes to assault their olfactory senses every time the "Bean Around The World" café roasted its daily allotment of coffee beans.

The odour was the result of smoke and VOC emissions coming from the in-house bean roaster and the café had a serious problem with their disgruntled neighbours.

The "Bean Around The World" café has a reputation in the community for making, hands-down, the best coffee in town. The quality of their cup is well known. Residents flock to the establishment every morning for their first cup of the day. The success of the café is built on its bean roasting capabilities. But Bean was also getting an unwanted reputation with its neighbours as being a polluter and a neighbourhood nuisance for the objectionable smell of their bean roasting operation. It wasn't long before shop owner, Barney McKenzie got a visit from officers of the municipality telling him to fix the problem or close shop.

Barney consulted with his long time friend and engineer Steve Panz of Inproheat Industries. Steve's experience in combustion and thermal process equipment seemed to be a fit for the problem. Though Inproheat's business had always been in heavier industrial equipment for the pulp & paper, mining, and oil and gas industries, the challenge of eliminating the odorous exhaust from this small bean roaster with a solution that was affordable and effective was an interesting challenge and an opportunity to help out a friend.

Inproheat was able to design and manufacture a small oxidizer unit that is suitable for roof top or indoor installation and could be remotely operated (turned on and off) from inside the café when roasting began. The oxidizer captures the exhaust and re-burns it to completely eliminate all visible plume and odour.

Now Barney's problem is taken care of with the flip of a switch. The neighbours are happy and coffee sales at Bean Around The World are booming. In the end it was Steve who thanked Barney for introducing him to a whole new market for Inproheat's products and expertise. The unit designed for Bean Around the World became the prototype for this small oxidizer that is specifically designed for coffee roasting and a variety of other food processing applications. With the growth of the boutique coffee roasting business several other roasters in Canada and the United States have now taken advantage of Inproheat's new oxidizers. And similar units are now installed at poultry and beef processing plants and seafood smoking operations. The market and applications for these highly efficient units are growing.